From the beginning of the recent reemergence of the interest in the history of women, one area of investigation has proved particularly popular: the treatment of women's diseases in 19th century medical practice and the response of women to a male-dominated medical profession. Out of the research hitherto undertaken, a significant hypothesis has emerged. Several historians have suggested that 19th century American doctors were hostile to their women patients and that their animosity was expressed in the painful and ineffective therapy they administered. Furthermore, it has been contended that the entrance of women into medicine was an outgrowth of their perception of this hostility; that female physicians viewed themselves as the saviours of their sex, and medicine, in Ann Douglas' phrase "as a weapon in a social and political struggle for power between the sexes." I have been dissatisfied with this point of view and have objected to the analysis of medical therapeutics without an understanding of the historical development of scientific knowledge; I have also claimed that such a portrait of Victorian society as well as the first generation of women doctors can only be termed a caricature. My own research is directed toward the writing of a book-length study of the entrance of women into the medical profession in this country. Conceiving of the study in the broadest social context, I shall consider the sociological and ideological background which provided a backdrop for women's interest in medicine and health. I have been particularly concerned with the question of how, where, within the context of l9th century values, women doctors became ideological innovators, and why and to what extent they remained culture bound. I also intend to trace the fate of these women into the early 20th century, considering their marriage and family patterns, their medical interest and therapeutics, and their influence, if any, on the profession as a whole.